Raw post data instead of WP_Post instances

[screamingdev]

Within WP_Query::get_posts you find:

// Convert to WP_Post objects.
                if ( $this->posts ) {
                        $this->posts = array_map( 'get_post', $this->posts );
                }

This costs a lot of time when fetching a lot of posts (e.g. products, orders, etc).

It could be fasten up by fetching only the field "ids" but this is also bad because when we need the post_content then a "get_post( 123 )" would do another query.

To bypass all of this a new "fields operator" could be added:

                if ( $this->posts && $q['fields'] !== 'raw' ) {
                        $this->posts = array_map( 'get_post', $this->posts );
                }

The SQL-Query would still fetch all data but we would prevent the data from going through the "get_post" stuff.

In times of Generator it is ridiculous to iterate over the same set of data multiple times. By receiving the raw data the developer can decide when to generate a WP_Post object.

Note:
filter = "raw" could imply "suppress_filters" = true because we no longer carry WP_Post objects. But it should be allowed by the developer to switch "suppress_filters = false" again because the stdObjects have almost the same structure as WP_Post objects. This means (in short):

if ( ! isset( $q['suppress_filters'] ) ) {
                        $q['suppress_filters'] = ($q['filter'] === 'raw' ? true: false);
                }

[johnbillion]

What's the performance impact of this change?

[screamingdev]

What? It creates objects and runs through some filters.
Getting the raw data from the database can be enough in some scenarios (esp. for fetching a lot of posts, products, orders, etc).

[johnbillion]

I mean what is the performance benefit of this change when you tested its performance? How much time and/or memory is saved?

[flixos90]

Given the lack of replies, backward implications of changing this, and unclear performance impact, I'm going to close this. It seems unrealistic / not worth implementing.